


The Rings on My Fingers and the Keys to My House

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, and then talks to his awesome wife about it, bc of cilantro and grape soda, blip sanders realizes that mike lawson is a mess, mike lawson is a mess, post-1x08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-03 01:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8691220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: Post-1x08. Blip goes back to the locker room for his batting gloves and finds Mike Lawson watching the TV like it’s broadcasting his funeral. “I get called into meetings these days, four or five other guys in the room, who all live in bigger houses and drive nicer cars than I do, and the biggest question anyone can bring themselves to ask me is, ‘Am I happy?’” Lawson scoffs. “And everyone in that room just sits there, looking at me, knowing that the answer should be yes.”





	

_Title from “[No Hard Feelings](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DtFGs7HP15d4&t=NmVlZDU5ODgxMTJmNDI0Mjg0NGY1YjNkZGVhNmQyYjFlY2IzODAzYSxiSm5VTkIzOA%3D%3D&b=t%3AiAw4tJIAalN1OvhWtUFPsQ&m=1)” by The Avett Brothers. Really struggled for a song for this one. Let me know if you guys have any good teammate/brotherhood songs that make you feel feelings._

**The Rings on My Fingers and the Keys to My House**

It’s not that Blip’s been totally oblivious to what’s happening. Actually, it’s pretty much the opposite. He’s been actively ignoring it. He’s a grown man with a wife and a family and a major league career to maintain, so until it started to affect any of those three things, he was perfectly content to pretend that nothing was out of the ordinary in the Padres’ locker room.

That bubble of blissful ignorance bursts right around the time that Lawson practically spits in Robles’ face and summons him to his “chambers” for a dressing down that goes sideways almost immediately. (“ _Feelings_?” the veteran catcher had scoffed, and there was something that sounded so familiar in his incredulity.) Honestly, Blip wonders how they didn’t all see it coming sooner.

But before any consequences can even be considered, the team gets the call that the storm’s passed, and it’s time for everyone but Lawson to get their heads back in the game and finish up. Blip takes five seconds to try and figure just how long they’ve been playing without their captain’s full attention, then shoves the issue of Mike and Ginny and whatever disaster is likely awaiting them all to the back of his mind, knowing it won’t be for long.

In fact, the respite is even shorter than he expects. When he hits the dugout for warmups and realizes he left his batting glove in the locker room, Lawson’s still standing there, staring at the TV like it’s broadcasting his funeral. At first, Blip thinks he’s just ignoring him, but when he moves towards his locker and glances up at the screen, he sees “BREAKING” on the lower crawl.

“We gonna need to talk about this?” he asks softly, practically tip-toeing around the catcher like he’s trying not to startle a bear.

“About what?” Lawson’s gruff attempt at ignorance is almost enough for Blip to cut him a break and hustle back to the field, but a look up at the news ticker tells him that there isn’t much time. Somebody at ESPN already has a source on a “potential trade.”

“About what changed?” They both sigh. “About cilantro, and grape soda, and your ability to mentally Shazam off-key Katy Perry songs?”

“No.” The catcher makes a sound that might be a laugh under different circumstances. “No, we’re not gonna talk about it.”

“You sure? If you…”

“We’re not going to talk about it,” Lawson interrupts, which is almost a relief, because Blip’s got no idea where to even begin. “We’re _never_ going to talk about it. I’m gonna go to Chicago, and it’ll be over and we won’t ever have to talk about it.”

It’s no secret he was considering a move – mostly because the team wanted him to consider it – but to hear Mike say it out loud socks Blip in the gut a little, in a way he wasn’t expecting.

“You asked for a trade?” He tries to stay calm, tries to sound like it’s not the craziest thing in the world. Getting himself on Lawson’s bad side will only do more harm, that’s a time-tested certainty. “Because of Ginny?”

“Not because of her.” The catcher shakes his head, scrubbing his hands over his face and looking positively miserable. It’s genuine, Blip knows that for certain, too. Mike Lawson only fakes the good feelings. “Not… _entirely_ because of her, anyway.”

Blip nods, mostly sure he understands, but still struggling to catch up. It seems like Lawson is, too. “It’s mostly because people keep asking me if I’m happy,” he admits, softly. Blip nods again, pursing his lips as more pieces fall into place.

“I get called into meetings these days, four or five other guys in the room, who all live in bigger houses and drive nicer cars than I do, and the biggest question anyone can bring themselves to ask me is, ‘Am I happy?’” Lawson scoffs. “And everyone in that room just sits there, looking at me, knowing that the answer should be yes.”

“But it’s not.” Blip finally finds a few words to offer, but they don’t belong to him.

“No, it’s not.” Lawson heaves another heavy, sad sigh, glancing back up at the TV. “Maybe they’re right. Maybe it’s time for a change of scenery.”

“Little extra hardware on that ring finger probably wouldn’t hurt either,” Blip smirks, offering a teasing deflection because it’s what he’s always done.

“It’s not about that,” Lawson fires back, voice low and angry, offended at the implication.

Blip believes him, and sobers, but a selfish part of him, the part that has 22 other teammates to consider, has questions and concerns that are starting to bubble to the surface. He feels a little betrayed by this sudden turnabout of loyalty – last anyone knew, Mike Lawson would eat his cleats before leaving San Diego – and he knows that others will likely take it even worse. So he takes a deliberate shot, before the captain lets himself too far off the hook.

“She’ll blame herself, you know that right?” Blip straightens up his shoulders and looks Lawson right in the eye. The other man shrinks back a step, and it’s deserved if he hasn’t been worrying himself sick about how this will affect Ginny. It’s what Blip’s been preoccupied with since Lawson started falling apart in the training room earlier. “If she finds out, she’ll blame herself.”

“Then she shouldn’t find out,” the catcher answers, reaching a new level of somber even as he’s offering a half-hearted threat. “There’s no reason for her to ever know.”

“You’d rather have her think that you just up and bailed on the team?” Blip snaps incredulously, purposely needling for reasons he knows are important, even if he’s not entirely proud of the technique. “Bailed on _her_ , midway through her rookie season?”

“It’ll be better in the long run, for her _and_ the team,” Lawson declares, raising his wavering voice like it’ll make it a fact. That’s what’s wrecking him, Blip finally understands, the idea that he and his errant feelings would ruin things for the Padres, or for Ginny. “She’s got such a good thing going, I can’t – I won’t mess that up just because of a crush.”

“That’s all it is?” Blip asks because he has to, and finds himself surprised when he doesn’t get the easy lie in return.

“I have no idea what it is,” Lawson clears his throat, sniffs twice and snaps from emotional wreck back to business mode. It’s a transformation Blip’s only seen once or twice before. It’s almost chilling, how good he is at covering up the cracks.

“At the very least, it’s a sign,” he says finally, and even his voice sounds different. “You better get back out there, Sanders, or you’re not getting an invite to my going-away party.”

Blip just gives him a long look that he hopes says everything there isn’t time for. “You got it, Cap.”

* * *

It’s raining again when Evy meets him in the players’ parking lot after they finally grind out the win, and she can read the distress on his face immediately.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” She takes the keys from his hand and steps around him to the driver’s side door and Blip loves his wife just that much more in these moments. It’s always the little things.

Little things, like climbing into the car beside her and stretching back in the passenger’s seat, flipping on the seat warmers, and telling her the truth about what’s bothering him as she pulls out of the parking lot.

“Mike’s getting traded to Chicago.” He pivots for the double play almost immediately, the facts are pretty clear no matter how much Lawson protests. “Because he’s in love with Ginny.”

His wife reacts exactly as he expected – a pop of disbelieving laughter – for only a moment. When he stays silent, though, her mirth is gone just as quickly as it came.

Evelyn turns to him for a split second, barely taking her eyes off the road, but he can see that she’s gone almost stone-faced, eyebrows furrowing like they do when she’s reading. “He said that?”

“Not really, not in so many words,” Blip admits. “But I think it’s true.”

“Wait, are you…” They hit a red light and Evy turns to him fully, almost bracing, like he’s going to hit her with an “April Fools!” or something, even though it’s almost fall. “Is this… for real?”

“Real enough to make Mike Lawson want to waive a no-trade clause and leave the team whose hat he’s gonna wear in Cooperstown.” Blip’s trying his hardest not to sound spiteful, but now that the news is settling and he’s got Evy to help take on the Ginny of it all, he can’t stop himself from wondering what this means for his own career.

Without Lawson, the locker room will need a leader, and he understands his position as the natural successor. It feels almost like finding himself the breadwinner of the family at 18 years old, time to throw himself on the fire and find out if he’s man enough to handle the heat. He says a silent prayer that Lawson’s trade goes through smooth enough that he be stuck answering a lot of questions.

“Well, damn.” His wife’s soft exclamation breaks through his little pity party, reminding him of the more immediate concerns. “I can’t believe he asked to get traded because of Ginny. I just, I can’t figure out what to feel about that.”

“The team’s been asking,” Blip clarifies. “But it seems pretty clear that his…  _feelings_ are the reason he said yes.”

“Does Ginny…”

“She doesn’t know.” He remembers how Lawson had managed to look every more heartbroken when he brought up the toll this would take on the young pitcher. “He doesn’t want her to.”

“But does she…”

“I was going to ask you the same question.” It’s a possibility Blip hadn’t allowed himself to consider fully until now, an extra complication he couldn’t even begin factor in. But Evy’s better at these kinds of things, and smarter than him by a mile. Maybe she’s seen something he hasn’t.

“I mean, I know she had a little hero crush,” she thinks out loud. Blip remembers something about a poster. “And she definitely wasn’t happy about him and Amelia, but I thought that was about professional stuff… Maybe it wasn’t?”

Now that he thinks about it, Blip wonders if the whole Mike and Amelia arrangement wasn’t entirely about Ginny in the first place. Lawson’s as self-destructive as they come when he needs to be, what better way to blow the whole thing up?

“We’ve never really talked about it,” his wife admits finally, softly, like she’s still considering something. “She’s always got bigger things to deal with.”

And that’s the crux of everything, isn’t it? Every single detail of Ginny Baker’s life is more complicated than it should be, and yet, this may be the ultimate dilemma: unstoppable force versus immovable object. “Which is why Mike thinks he’s gotta haul his ass all the way to the Cubs.”

“Poor Mike,” Evelyn says quietly. “And, poor Chicago. And poor, poor Ginny.”

“He doesn’t want her to know,” Blip reminds her again. “You can’t say anything.”

She nods solemnly, but too many times to pass for relaxed. “Of course. That’s best for everyone.”

Blips sighs, thinking that Lawson’s mopey face isn’t going to hold a candle to Ginny’s when she finds out he’s leaving. He can almost see it now, she’ll keep her eyes on the dirt and her jaw clenched tight, just like she had on her first day of AAA ball.

The team had thought she was freezing them out, Blip remembers, power dynamics so they wouldn’t think she was a flower. He had been the first to learn, weeks later, that her call-up fell one year to the day after her father’s death. Some part of her had probably wanted to fall to pieces, but she set herself in stone and pitched seven scoreless.

“This couldn’t be more of a mess,” he mutters. Ginny will do that again, Blip feels certain. It’ll be a good long while before she lets anyone else in like she did with Lawson. 

Evy says something under her breath and he doesn’t catch it. “Huh?”

“Well, there is _one_ way that it could be even more of a mess.”

He’s not sure what to say to that, because she’s right, but giving the idea any more credence feels like opening Pandora’s Box.

“Oh, what if she _does_?” his wife whispers mournfully, and Blip’s heart sinks a little. “That would be a special kind of awful.”

“I have this feeling it’s gonna be at least a little awful no matter which way it goes,” he answers with a shrug and a sigh, itching to move onto something solvable. They’ve got more pressing concerns at the moment, like what’s for dinner and whether or not there’s a fight (or two fights) about math homework in their immediate future.

They’ll circle back to this later, and Evy will do her honest best to try and fix it. (He’s skeptical, but knows better than to doubt her.) For now, Blip sticks to his own strengths. “Not everybody can have it quite as easy as buying a bacon burger at a college concession stand.”

“Ha, easy?” His wife turns to face him fully again, with her lips pursed and a look that would mean trouble if he couldn’t see the sparkle behind her eyes. “You _wish_ this was easy, Blip Sanders.”

“I meant easy to find,” He reaches across the console to take her hand and she lets him, and smiles when he kisses it, so he knows they’re all good. “C’mon baby, you know I work hard as hell to keep you. I mean, I even had to make the All-Star team this year.”

Evy laughs then, real and joyful, like she has since they were those kids at the snack bar, and squeezes his hand tight. They’ll be OK. Blip worries for his heartsick friends, and takes another moment to count his many blessings, but then they’re home, and he breathes easy. They’ll be OK.


End file.
